Fein: Bush signing statement takes ‘Constitution backwards.’

In the Washington Times this morning, former Reagan Justice Department official Bruce Fein rips President Bush’s recent signing statement on Iraq. By attempting to disregard Congress’s right to bar funding for permanent bases, Bush’s statement will live in “infamy” because it “tacitly averred that Congress was required to appropriate money to support every presidential national security gambit,” he writes. By not holding Bush accountable for the signing statement, Fein says “Congress has taken the Constitution backward more than three centuries.”